Washington, Hollywood Blur The Line Between Reality, Fiction

March 6, 1996|By Myriam Marquez of The Sentinel Staff

Murphy Brown tells the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, ''Oh, Newt, you're such a kook.'' And Newt Gingrich laughs good-naturedly.

Oh, what a difference four years and another presidential campaign make in the increasingly incestuous Hollywood-Washington news-media-entertainment complex. The line between reality and fiction continues to cross and blur.

And many of us aging Baby Boomers, who grew up on television, find ourselves wondering: Is our eyesight slipping or is that blurring just a sign that the political season once again is upon us?

We go from having Murphy, the fictional television character played by Candice Bergen, turned into a despicable femiNazi, that great mocker of fatherhood, in 1992 by Vice President Dan Quayle to Murphy being praised by Speaker Gingrich in a tongue-and-cheek skit in 1996.

The 1992 Murphy Brown plot line had the fictional TV journalist bearing a child out of wedlock. From then on, the fortysomething character became a symbol of the much-maligned single-teen-age-mom-welfare-queen in the family-values game.

So why would Gingrich feel comfortable appearing on a show that pokes fun at conservative politicians?

Media exposure is the name of the game, particularly after public-opinion polls continue to show that Gingrich's ''Republican Revolution'' is in trouble. More and more voters, polls keep showing, seem to believe that Gingrich's deficit-cutting budget revolution offered too much pain for them.

Gingrich, being the smart political tactician that he is, knows he needs to soften his image with Americans.

And so we see news pictures of Gingrich reading to school kids. We see him feeding the animals at the zoo.

As spring emerges, we see Gingrich in kinder-gentler photo opportunities after the often-stormy winter season of harsh words and federal-government-employee furloughs. Disagreement between President Clinton and the majority Republican Congress over which programs to cut to achieve a balanced federal budget seems to have helped Clinton's popularity.

While the president basks, at least for now, in an image of Protector of the Children and the Aged, Gingrich and his party struggle to defend themselves against charges that their revolution isn't about protecting greedy corporate giants at the expense of the American worker.

And so, on Monday night, we were treated to Gingrich on Murphy Brown. There he was, with a big, down-home Georgia grin, telling Murphy that journalists are free to crack jokes at politicians' expense because we have the First Amendment on our side.

In Monday's plot, reporters poked fun at politicians in a ''Presscapades'' show. Gingrich then came backstage to tell Murphy he enjoyed a skit in which ''President Clinton'' is chasing a pig named Newt.

Gingrich, known as a ''bomb thrower'' for most of his political career, got a chance to show a less ornery side.

Heaven only knows that the Republican Party needs to put a more uplifting face on itself. That is no secret to Gingrich, who was instrumental in getting a Republican majority elected to Congress in 1994.

It's no secret either to the Republican presidential candidates, who increasingly in stump speeches quote former President Ronald Reagan, the most uplifting Republican speaker this nation has had this century.

Can Gingrich fix his party's bruised image by this summer's Republican Convention?

Tune in. Maybe Murphy Brown would be invited to introduce the 1996 Republican presidential nominee at a brokered convention. Could it be . . . Newt?